People With Acromegaly Due To Excess GH Have Thicker Than Average Articular Cartilage

Something which was suspected by me after reading a few interesting studies on Articular cartilage and acromegaly made me hypothesis that if a person has acromegalic symptoms due to excess GH production, they would probably have thicker than average articular cartilage at the end of their bones.

Based on the study “Reversibility of Joint Thickening in Acromegalic Patients: An Ultrasonography Study” my guess is validated to some extent. There is a 2nd study entitled “THE ARTICULAR AND OTHER LIMB CHANGES IN ACROMEGALY” which I was not able to get to, but I would guess at this point would provide more proof that this hypothesis is valid.

However, the obvious question to ask is “how does this scientific fact contribute towards the research or finding a way to make me taller?”

I am not exactly sure at this moment. I am currently having a little bit of trouble in making the connections between the research on how articular cartilage growth works and height increase techniques and possibilities. I can always hope that if we figured out that if we can conclude that the articular cartilage still is going through processes of remodeling and ‘growing’ in some way it might mean that we can stimulate it using some type of growth factor or collagen to make it accelerate the rate of cartilage growth, leading to longer bones. If it is true that the articular cartilage at the ends of bones have the ability to go through hypertrophy from excess of GH running through the system, maybe it might be possible to using the increase in volume of the cartilage for some end goals.

From the 1st study…

“The thicknesses of shoulder, wrists and knees articular cartilages and that of heel tendons were significantly increased in patients with active acromegaly compared to those in healthy subjects”

These test subjects were assumed to have no other type of bone problems at their adult age except for the acromegaly. When the subjects were given 6 weeks of treatment using something known as octreotide (OCT), the thickness of the articular cartilage actually shrank. I would later learn that octreotide is a type of synthetic somatostatin which has a very strong ability in inhibiting growth hormone and insulin stimulation.

If a synthetic somatostatin and growth hormone increases have a way of regulating the thickness of cartilage in our articular cartilage, it could explain why a few people who did take growth hormone injections as an adult increased their height by around 1/4-1/2 of an inch. The increase in height might even be semi-permanent, unless there was a 2nd physiological process going on in their body inhibiting the growth hormone release.

So this could be a new way of increasing our height as adults, but the gains could be as little as 1/4th of an inch in height but the other effects is that our wrists, ankles, and joints become wider and thicker.